Website Gives Coding Lessons to Rogue Employees

Share

Website Gives Coding Lessons to Rogue Employees

Mayor Mike Bloomberg says his New Year's resolution is to learn to be a programmer. At least, that's what the outspoken CEO of New York tweeted to his 208,000-odd followers on Thursday.

"My New Year's resolution is to learn to code with Codecademy in 2012!" he (or one of his handlers) wrote.

Codecademy is a website that gives you programming lessons. Its Code Year program sends weekly coding exercises straight to your email inbox. We question whether Mayor Bloomberg will actually graduate from Codecademy, but he's not alone in signing up for the service. Since New Year's Day, over 200,000 people have made similar resolutions. And according to co-founder Zach Sims, even businesses are taking notice.

Right now, Codecademy focuses on three standard web languages: JavaScript, Ruby, and Python. Traditionally, those aren't the languages big businesses use in honing their back-end infrastructure, but so many companies now need web programmers, and these languages are gradually working their way into the back-end as well. "Enterprise is not our focus, at this point," Sims tells Wired. "But the enterprise already seems to be using it."

Sims says Codecademy has received numerous requests from large companies to develop lessons for behind-the-scenes development tools such JQuery, so that they can train non-technical employees. Sims says such languages are certainly on the roadmap, but at this point, they're "second tier" priorities. Though he won't name companies that have reached out, he says many are in the media and publishing industry.

What's more, he says, company employees have been known to sign up for courses on their own. Some have trouble using the service at work due to IT department download and execution restrictions, which can deny access to code editor, but the company is now offering a browser-based "Labs" version of the service. The rub is that this requires a recently updated browser, which may also be restricted.

With the explosive start to 2012, Sims says the company is scrambling to put together as much coursework as possible, while listening to user feedback for the most sought after languages. The curriculum is created in part by engineers (who often have a reputation for being poor educators), but the company has also hired former Teach for America instructors and professors at NYU and Columbia University's engineering department to consult on curriculum structure and language.